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Fresh

The Tomatometer is 60% or higher.

Rotten

The Tomatometer is 59% or lower.

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Fantastic Four Videos

Fantastic Four Photos

Movie Info

FANTASTIC FOUR, a contemporary re-imagining of Marvel's original and longest-running superhero team, centers on four young outsiders who teleport to an alternate and dangerous universe, which alters their physical form in shocking ways. Their lives irrevocably upended, the team must learn to harness their daunting new abilities and work together to save Earth from a former friend turned enemy. (C) Fox

The latest iteration of "Fantastic Four" is far from what its name suggests. Profoundly uninteresting, it hits all the beats of the standard superhero movie, but provides nothing in the way of imagination or magic.

It's not wholesale terrible -- just depressingly mediocre, and at a certain point you sort of start wishing it WERE definitively terrible, because that would at least make it more entertaining or give it a certain strange raison d'etre.

I'm not opposed to a slower-paced, character-centric superhero film, in theory. The problem with Fantastic Four is that these characters aren't interesting. They don't start interesting, and they don't go anywhere interesting.

A poorly constructed, ineptly executed, flatfooted piece of Branded Product that plays as though it were written by a piece of software fed every superhero movie script to date and instructed to synthesize them.

As flawed as it was when it was first released in the 2005, the original film still stuck to the tried-and-true formula of quickly getting the origin story out of the way to get to the good stuff: the characters and the action.

Audience Reviews for Fantastic Four

½

Shocked this got such low ratings. Although it's far from perfect, I liked seeing the less flashy origin story without all the "camp". I would love to see this Fantastic Four appear in a crossover like the Infinity Gauntlet.

Jon Lantz

Super Reviewer

Josh Trank's (Chronicle) adaptation of the Fantastic Four property is sadly another misfire in Hollywood's continuing failed attempts at bringing Marvel's First Family to the big screen.
The big problem with this movie is that it feels like nobody was really at the helm steering the production. The tone and approach is completely all over the place. One minute it's an 80's-style Spielberg kids movie, then it's a silly attempt at being 70's-style hard science fiction with silly science, then it's horror, and then a bland visual effects-infused superhero affair during the film's extremely rushed climax.
The film is mildly enjoyable for the first 30 minutes thanks to it's talented young cast (who do a fine job despite the script not giving them much to work with) and some of the visuals are nice (Ex. Johnny Storm's flame effects). But after they get their powers, everything falls apart. The plot becomes a confused ridiculous mess, the character relationships go completely under-developed, the visual effects are shockingly cheap-looking for a 120 million dollar blockbuster, and there is no real action up until the very end.
It all culminates into an absolutely lame climactic battle between the FF and Dr. Doom (who is completely wasted in this movie) that is brought down by weak effects, un-imaginative action, and a nonsensical resolution. I'd rank it up there as one of the worst endings to a film I've ever seen.
It's a shame because at it's heart there was a unique approach to a superhero movie somewhere in this mess (hard science fiction with emphasis on emotional story-telling) but the ideas never culminate into a good movie.
FF fans will have to continue to wait longer for a good FF movie adaptation...or just watch "The Incredibles".

Christopher Heim

Super Reviewer

½

"Fantastic 4" is more a fantastic two-and-a-half. The rest just sucks.

Christian C

Super Reviewer

Hmm not the summer superhero Blockbuster that it aspired to be. Despite the stellar cast of Miles Teller, Michael B. Jordan, and Kate Mara, the story is hokey pokey and the stakes are so high that they're impossible to ground in reality.